Arcade beats the rap as trap

The Georgia State Patrol has once again cleared Arcade's police department of an accusation that the city runs a speed trap in the tiny town on U.S. Highway 129.

While the investigation cleared the department, the town still is a speed trap in the eyes of some drivers.

"I wasn't worried," said Arcade Chief Randy Williams. "We are not a speed trap, and I knew we had followed all the regulations on traffic enforcement. ... But I think Arcade just has that reputation, and I don't think people know all of what we do in town."

The State Patrol, which regulates radar use by police departments through the Georgia Department of Public Safety, has investigated allegations that the Arcade Police Department is operating a speed trap four times in the past dozen years. Investigators have never found any illegal practices.

The patrol was reviewing the department when Williams came to work for Arcade in 1998. It opened another investigation in fall of 2003 and once again in 2005.

Troopers launched the most recent investigation in March after a software developer from Nicholson, Lyle Thompson, filed a formal complaint saying he experienced firsthand what he describes as a pattern of unwarranted traffic stops.

Thompson has been stopped five times in the past three years and his wife has been stopped twice, he said. Sometimes they've gotten tickets, which they say are bogus, and other times they've been let go because officers don't have a reason to cite them.

He called the behavior harassment.

But state troopers found that, while Thompson may have felt harassed, Arcade's officers haven't been doing anything wrong.

The Georgia State Patrol and Department of Public Safety define a speed trap as a town or county that derives more than 40 percent of its police force's budget from minor speeding ticket fines and court fees. They define minor speeding tickets as those written to motorists traveling less than 17 mph over the speed limit.

During this last investigation, auditors found that Arcade's police department only brings in 2.7 percent of its budget from that type of traffic ticket.

In 2005, troopers found that only 1.5 percent of the department's revenue came from minor speeding tickets.

A similar investigation, that ran from fall 2003 to January 2004, found that the police department brought in only 5.8 percent of its revenue from minor speeding tickets.

Despite the department's revenue numbers, the image of the small-town speed trap persists.

"When I got my license in the '70s, people told me then not to go into Arcade because it was a speed trap," Williams said. "So, I think that reputation has been around a long time."

The truth is that budget cuts and staffing shortages have meant that the department has had to put most of its efforts into community policing, patrolling neighborhoods and taking reports, Williams said.

They do some traffic enforcement, but officers do not have time to lie in wait on the side of the road throughout every shift, he said.